Our family is gathering for the holidays. And with individuals, among other things, they bring their Tablet PCs. That’s neat. I noticed again yesterday that five Tablet PCs lined the kitchen counter, each with a user. And no Tablet PC for me during the day, so I fooled eveyone and rose early again this AM to stake a claim for a few minutes at the beginning of the day! 🙂 I wonder where we’ll put the three or four additional Tablet PCs when they arrive with more family members in a few days.
Most Tablet PCs yesterday stayed in use for at least 18 of the 24 hour day, including while watching TV and conversing with others in the household. Joan gets really antsie when she sees a glass of water sitting on the counter near a Tablet. She remembers the computer buildroom rule in our computer warehouse: NO LIQUIDS ON THE SAME FURNITURE AS A COMPUTER.
During part of yesterday, two of our family Tableteers were talking with one, sometimes more, Tableteers over Instant Messenger and Skype. They used tablets to update their websites, debug software, conduct business, study math online, draw with digital ink, and just plain fiddle around.
Our family, like thousands of others, have had enthusiastic members about computers for almost three decades, including for home built units. For many of our family members, computers have absorbed more interest than flying, tractors, cars, power tools, and racing. Some of us combined our interests by building and selling fast desktop computers before most others. It’s interesting to see our next family generation lock onto digital ink the way some of the rest of us latch onto handtools, spark plugs, pencils, papers, and type. Ain’t life grand! Oh, I hear someone moving around, so another Tablet will fire up soon.
Tablets are fun. I used on in my recent masters degree for my thesis project. It involved embedding a tablet PC inside of a kitchen table which was then hooked up to an external intelligence system that monitors family activity. That tablet was an awesome addition to the system because it made controlling the system easy without cluttering the table.